Supply issues are partly put to bed

Brent crude has dropped on a raft of headlines pushing againts supply problems that might arise from the North Sea Forties pipeline shutdown. Commodity news has been front and centre today and a big driver of commodity FX. Here’s the latest headlines;

  • IEA say they are monitoring the closure but currently has no need to act as the market is well supplied
  • Scottish minister says there are no plans to shut the Grangemouth refinery, and they are not expecting much impact for fuel and gas supplies
  • Italy earlier declared a state of emergency on the Austrian gas explosion but further comments suggest that the slack could be picked up from other sources.

Brent had risen to a high of 65.80 eralier but the headlines above helped send it back down to 64.63, although we’ve already bounced back to 65.25.

In FX, the CAD gained as oil prices rose among general energy price rises. We touched a low of 1.2812 but are now back up to 1.2856. AUD is fairing a bit better and has only lost around 18 pips from its 0.7579 high. GBPUSD, which can be a mover on oil prices too, has dipped from another test towards the 1.3380 highs and is trading at 1.3362.

US PPI was out and that’s provided some USD strength also. EURUSD is the main paiur suffering as it falls to a low just now of 1.1736 from 1.1770 (there’s also some yen strength in play as EURJPY is falling too). USDJPY is breaking new highs at 113.63 and faces some resistance around 113.80. USDCHF is also gaining as it runs up to 0.9934 from a low of 0.9890.

FX pairs 15m charts

A little livelier than this morning so let’s see where we go from here.

Ryan Littlestone

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